Creativity

Art / Creativity

Rejected lately (or ever) and looking for encouragement?

Don't know who Mr. P. Hewson of Dublin, Ireland is? Read the following rejection letter to him and his band to see one of the great rejection letters of all time. (Hint: his band has sold over 150 million albums, the band won 22 Grammy awards, and Rolling Stone magazine ranked them in the top 25 greatest artists of all time). If you didn't figure it out, RSO records summarily rejected Bono and his band U2 in 1979, about a year before their first album, Boy. You know the rest. So if you've been rejected lately, put yourself in the camp of Bono and U2. For that matter, the Beatles, too, who were rejected in 1962 with “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music…

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June 3, 2014

Awareness / Creativity / Freedom / Nature / Tips

Visualizing reactivity and freedom, part 2: how to improve

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, None but our self can free our mind. -- Bob Marley, Redemption Song Context How do you move from living reactively, like in this graph, where you can't help but react to any intense motivation: To living aware and non-reactively like this, where you are aware of many motivations but don't feel compelled to react blindly to any? That change brings freedom. It comes from raising awareness and lowering compulsion to act on it. How to raise awareness by increasing your sensitivity to your motivations A motivation being subtle---that is, not intense---doesn't mean it's unimportant. On the contrary, often your most important motivations are subtle ones. How many people want to write books, paint, and so on, but never do…

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May 28, 2014

Creativity / Freedom / Models / Nature / Visualization

Visualizing reactivity and freedom, part 1

Think of a time you reacted blindly. Did it go well? How do you feel about leaders who react without thinking or intuition? You don't want to react blindly---the opposite of leadership, since it means you're reacting to someone else, or unpredictable events in your environment, which I call blowing in the breeze. Most people understand the term "reactive" vaguely, so they can't do much about it. I find visualizing complex ideas helps me understand them. Visualizing reactivity Context: at any moment many things in your environment, body, and mind call for your attention and create motivations. You feel hunger and thirst, your boss yells at you, your kids yell for your attention, you remember you have to do your taxes, you want to go…

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May 27, 2014

Creativity / Humor

113,792 points in 2048 with the 8192 tile!

After the game in the picture below I couldn't help myself emailing a friend about it the following. I don't know if I'm more proud or ashamed and if it's from the high score or the poem. Look on my high score, ye mighty, and despair! You met a geek from an antique land Who emailed: "Sixteen small and colored numbered tiles Stand on my screen. Near them, on my Aeron, Half sunk, my procrastinating self sits, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that two-oh-four-eight well my time wasted Which yet passes, composing this poetic note, The hand that moved tiles and the eyes turned red: And on the screen these words appear: 'My name is Spodek, player of pointless…

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May 24, 2014

Creativity / Humor / Leadership

How to win over a stadium of 20,000 angry African soccer fans

"You! You cannot do that here!" A voice in a stadium of 20,000 people told my friend he was breaking a rule. The man yelling pointed at my friend and sounded angry. A man next to the first saw what he was pointing at---my friend---and pointed and yelled he couldn't do that here too. Then another, another, and another. Soon a whole section was pointing at him, angrily yelling at him he couldn't do what he was doing. But what was he doing? My friend didn't understand what was going on. He and two of his friends had decided to go to their first soccer game in Dar es Salaam, where they'd lived for the better part of a year. They had barely walked in…

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April 22, 2014

Art / Creativity

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

On a note of remembrance, many years ago, when I lived in Paris, my friend volunteered at the English Language Library for the Blind there. She told me they valued American accents in the readings there and asked if I would read a book for them. I agreed and decided on Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who died yesterday. The librarian suggested starting with a shorter book, but I loved the book so much I couldn't pick another. This was about 1990. I had read the book a year or two before, my father's hardback copy. Only after starting it did I realize how much longer it takes to read a book out loud than silently and how much time…

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April 18, 2014

Creativity / Education

Creativity — The Series

Do you like creative things and being creative? Read my series on creativity. I just posted it as a series. Click here to read it. You can become more creative.

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March 30, 2014

Art / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Tips

Creativity — The Series

The series of posts below covers creativity, mainly exploring counterproductive mainstream myths about it. I used to view "creativity" as vague, but a few sources dramatically and convincingly changed my perspective. One was a class at Columbia Business School called Systematic Creativity in Business, by Jacob Goldenberg. Creativity being systematic was designed to appear in the course name as a contradiction, but isn’t when you understand the material. His book is great and covers the material well, though the tone is academic. The other is Creativity: Beyond the Myth of Genius, which revolutionized my views on creativity. Mainstream ideas on creativity try to make the topic seem romantic — like that Mozart was a creative genius beyond ordinary human capability and he worked in ways…

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March 30, 2014

Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Events

See Coco & Breezy at NYU Monday!

If you don't know Coco & Breezy, they are two rising stars with their own fashion line. Check out their page here. They started their company in their teens, moving to New York City from Minneapolis and have been growing since. Here's an overview from the event announcement for their engagement Monday at NYU: The Entrepreneurship Special Interest Housing Floor invite entrepreneurs and fashion-minded alike to attend an evening with Coco & Breezy Corianna and Brianna, also known as Coco and Breezy, are the founders of a cutting-edge sunglass and fashion brand based in New York City that aims to reach new fashion heights and introduce fashion connoisseurs all over the world to their unique sense of style and original accessories. Coco and Breezy designed…

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March 27, 2014

Creativity / Education / Nature

A human perspective on quantum gravity

You've probably heard or read about the experimental discovery of gravity waves, a major and historic discovery in science with widespread implications, in the news lately. Understanding those implications is difficult. So is understanding the experiment. What's not hard to understand is the effect of hearing about the experimental results on someone who does understand its meaning and who explored this part of nature for decades. This video shows the unrehearsed reaction of two such people with a friendly surprise breaking of the news. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlfIVEy_YOA I notice most their interest in nature---specifically understanding what the experiments observed. I suspect to them, looking at what most people see as impossible-to-decipher equations and graphs, the data is like seeing deeper beauty of nature. I expect they feel…

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March 19, 2014

Creativity / Education

Meeting my fourth Nobel Prize winner

Sorry no big insight today, but I couldn't help note that in attending a talk by Joseph Stiglitz and participating in the question and answer afterward, I got to interact with my fourth Nobel Prize winner. I met more of them when I studied physics, in particular studying with one. I also got to be friends with a Professor who had been hired by one of the other laureates in the department specifically to work on hard problems---one of the major prize-winners, who could have won it twice---and then was there when another professor was awarded the prize. I'm probably just bragging. And to say I met him might overstate our interaction. But Stiglitz's talk was great. He knew his material and presented it simply…

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March 8, 2014

Art / Creativity / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

The value of entrepreneurial skills for artists and vice versa

Pyragraph Magazine just published a piece I wrote, "The Value of Entrepreneurial Skills for Artists," on how I hustled (a term that for me in entrepreneurship means only positive things) my way into a prestigious teaching gig at NYU while creating a big public art work. I loved and benefited from each. Neither opportunity could stand on its own, but both together worked. And the city, the school, and the students benefited. You don't have to make art to see how you can apply the story to your life. Check out the story.

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March 6, 2014

Art / Creativity / Tips

Show, don’t tell

I don't often find myself at a loss for words, but my mind was racing too fast to pick anything to come out. I looked out the cafe window at the people bundled in their coats, Spring still weeks away. In front of an agent I had recently started working with on the early draft of a few chapters the book I'd hurried to finish in the last few days said the words "show, don't tell," which she had just explained to me was rule number one of writing. And that my writing was all tell and hardly any show. I had hoped I would have gotten at least to rule number two. She eased the pain by explaining it became rule number one not…

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March 4, 2014

Art / Awareness / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Events / Leadership

What you can learn from a film director

The reason we on the Distinguished Leaders Committee of Columbia Business School's alumni club booked a director for this evening's talk was something one of last year's speakers, Rita McGrath, said. If you're near New York City, I recommend you come (click here for details of location and how to sign up, you don't have to have graduated from Columbia to join). She pointed out that as people work at companies for shorter times, their personal networks that they maintain become more important. That is, someone you hire in their twenties today may not have worked at any company for even a year, yet the most effective ones will have something generations before didn't: a personal network of people at diverse places they can call…

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February 27, 2014

Art / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Events / Leadership

See “The Business of Movies with Director Corydon Wagner, winner Golden Lion Cannes 2012” February 27, 6-8pm

I will be presenting Golden Lion Cannes Award-winning Director Corydon Wagner February 27, 6-8pm. As a successful entrepreneur who leads projects with billions of dollars at play, he will present what business leaders can learn from directing and producing film. Sign up here. Below is the announcement text with a link to Wagner's page. Business today forces leaders to form and lead teams under difficult conditions, even where few team members have worked together before, yet all have to create world-class quality on which billion-dollar campaigns hinge. The film industry has worked in those conditions since its start and business leaders can learn from it. Corydon Wagner, Cannes Golden Lion award-winning Director and co-founder of his production company, will describe the big picture and details of such…

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February 5, 2014

Art / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

People who succeeded despite adversity, part 3: Superbowl Edition

[This post is part of a series on people who succeed despite adversity. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Continuing my series on people who succeeded adversity, I'll start with deaf football player in today's Superbowl, as shown in these two videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW51d5Om614 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQvB7FMkIWg Person Achievement Adversity Derrick Coleman First offensive deaf football player in the NFL, who said "“They told me it couldn’t be done, that I was a lost cause. I was picked on and picked last. Coaches didn’t know how to talk to me. They gave up on me. Told me I should just quit. They didn’t call my name.…

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February 2, 2014

Creativity / Tips

Write a book! Feel your own book in your hands.

I can't tell you how good it feels to have your own book in your hands. I've been meaning to write that for a while -- since I got my first printed book from Book Patch. A short book costs less than ten dollars to print. From then on you'll always have a book you wrote. You can hold it, thumb the pages, show it to friends, get more copies to give away, and so on. If you're like me you'll keep improving it, talking to editors and designers to help. I'm sure parents will tell me since I haven't held a child of my own I've probably felt a small fraction of what they did. That doesn't detract from how good having your own…

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January 31, 2014

Art / Blog / Creativity / Freedom

The complete simplicity of T. S. Eliot

Martha Graham's words on discipline, conformity, and freedom influenced me enough that I quoted her in several posts. She quotes T. S. Eliot describing "complete simplicity (costing not less than everything)." Two of my posts on her are "A master speaks on creative expression" and "A model on the foundation of personal freedom." I had to look up the T. S. Eliot reference, so, in case you would too, I'll copy his poem below, followed by a few words of context and another "poem" to contrast it with. Actually, this is just the closing part of the longer Four Quartets. We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for…

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December 22, 2013

Art / Blog / Creativity / Tips

8 harmful consequences of confusing your beliefs with reality

Many people make the mistake of thinking that some things they think are beliefs and others are not beliefs but facts. Or that they are just right. For example, if you ask them who they think might be the next President, they might say it could be Hillary Clinton. They'd say that was a belief because they can't prAove who will become the next President. They just have to wait until it happens. If you ask them what one plus one is they'll say two. If you ask them if that's a belief, they'll say no, they don't believe one plus one is two, it's a fact they know. What you believe isn't reality, it's your belief about reality Even if something is objectively true,…

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November 25, 2013

Blog / Creativity / Freedom / Leadership

Some “problems” you want to have

Yesterday I wrote about how leadership creates community, which, if you persevere, leads to living freely and by your values and experiencing deep emotional reward. Your life improves by doing so. It creates effects I can only call problems, but they are problems you want to have because they help you learn and grow even more. The "problem" with knowing how to make your dreams come true -- in making your fantasies reality As you develop your skills in leading others and creating the social worlds you want, you learn that your deepest emotional reward comes from your relationships with the people closest to you, including yourself. As a leader, you find yourself surrounded by people you mutually appreciate, respect, love, support, challenge, open up…

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November 14, 2013

Blog / Creativity / Leadership

Leading people creates community, which feels like creating your world

Remember when I wrote "You can't "create your world” but you can do better"? I've been meaning to expand on this aspect of leading your community. The more you learn to lead, the more you can make your community how you want it. The more you do so, the more your behavior, thoughts, and beliefs take on two properties. You behave, think, and believe more freely and more by your values. Sounds great, doesn't it? Who doesn't want to live more freely and by their values? Funny that more people don't do it, often scared to start the process. Since we're such social creatures and our communities feel like our social worlds, when we create our social worlds the way we want, it's easy to…

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November 13, 2013

Art / Blog / Creativity / Leadership / Tips

The route to quality is through quantity

I read a story with a lesson for anyone who creates anything too helpful not to copy. As much as I didn't want to copy something you can find elsewhere, I couldn't stop myself. I hadn't read it before so I hope it's new to you. It's from a book called Art and Fear on creating art, but you'll find it useful for creating anything -- products, beliefs, rules to live by, ways to motivate yourself and others, or whatever. Enjoy: The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely…

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November 8, 2013

Blog / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

A risk that paid off and learning from it

Here's an anecdote from a woman named Elle Luna: I was using Uber all the time in San Francisco, even though I hated the design. And then I went to the Crunchies awards ceremony and at a post-ceremony event, where I was in a ball gown, I saw the CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, sitting at the bar. I was three whiskeys deep at this point and I walked up to him and said, “I use Uber all the time and I absolutely hate the app. I think you should bring me in to fix it.” He replied, “Oh, yeah? What are the three things you’d fix about it?” I said, “I’d redo the logo, redo the entire app, and change the rating system.” I…

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October 31, 2013

Art / Blog / Creativity

How many Mozarts, Galileos, or Aristotles are there today?

Pick any great historical figure. We often regard them as unparalleled geniuses the likes of which we may never see again. On the other hand, they were human beings like us. They performed in some areas well beyond average. What if their abilities or traits weren't once ever but once in a generation? It's interesting to see what you conclude, as I'll show. Then we'd expect to see others of comparable abilities or skills. We could pick any figure, but let's talk about Mozart for concreteness. In his time the earth's population was about 700 million or so, roughly a tenth of today. Could that mean we should expect ten people of Mozart's ability today? In Mozart's times a smaller fraction of the population had…

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October 28, 2013

Blog / Creativity

Reject every belief in my book but learn to create your own before adopting mine without learning that skill

People are emailing about my awesome new book everyone should read, ReModel: Create mental models to improve your life and lead simply and effectively. Several people said they found a concept in the Introduction particularly meaningful, creating enthusiasm to read the rest of the book. I communicated that concept twice, first writing: I'd rather you learned to create your own beliefs and forgot mine than didn't learn the skill and adopted all my models. Later continuing: As valuable and helpful as my beliefs are to me, they are a minor part of this book. The major point is what they illustrate—that you can create and choose your beliefs. Again, I'd rather have you reject every belief in this book but learn to create better ones…

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October 23, 2013